


A Lesson in Self-Worth

by SlayerFest98



Series: The Doctor and the Captain [3]
Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005), Torchwood
Genre: Depression, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-14
Updated: 2014-07-13
Packaged: 2018-02-08 18:28:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1951620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SlayerFest98/pseuds/SlayerFest98
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set after the events of The Waters of Mars, the Doctor comes to Jack after he changed time in such a state which horrifies Jack. As he nurses the Time Lord back to health, Jack discovers what the Doctor did on Mars and tries to restore the alien's confidence in himself, even though his time is limited...</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Lesson in Self-Worth

Jack was sitting in his office after a long day of craziness at Torchwood. After the power outage and all the Weevils breaking free of their cages, the day had been taken up with trying to get all the creatures back into the Torchwood containment facilities.

He had sent everyone home as they were all exhausted, but Jack didn’t need to sleep as much as they did, so here he was, trying to concentrate on filling out paperwork without much success.

Eventually, he discarded the files that he wasn’t really working on and rubbed his tired eyes. It was at that exact moment when he heard a noise. The most wonderfully familiar noise to him in the whole universe, the noise that made his heart skip a beat and made him feel all jittery on the inside with anticipation.

It was the whirring, whining of the TARDIS.

Jack leapt to his feet, up-ending his chair in his excitement, and dashed out to the main area of the Hub where the blue Police Box was fading in and out of view. Papers few about everywhere and when the TARDIS came to a halt, he waited expectantly for the familiar creak of the door and the Doctor’s face to pop out and grin maniacally at him.

But nothing happened. The old girl just sat there expectantly. So Jack approached the box and placed a hand on the wooden door.

“Is it bad?” he asked the ship.

She whirred in assent and Jack banged his head against the door lightly, “Shit. Well, wish me luck…”

The TARDIS whirred again, but this time with encouragement, before Jack took a breath and pushed through the squeaky door.

The console room looked as normal as ever, nothing seemed out of the ordinary, but there was no sign of the Doctor. He looked around, scanning the large room before looking to the left and seeing, perched up on the tiny loft; a small, huddled, pinstriped shape.

Jack felt as though his stomach fell through the floor. He felt ill just thinking of what must have happened to leave the Doctor, The Oncoming Storm, in such a pitiable state. He tentatively climbed the little ladder and approached the impossible man slowly.

“Doctor?” Jack said quietly, stopping a few feet away.

The Doctor started and scrambled away from him with a strangled sob.

“Hey, Doc,” Jack said, holding up a hand. “It’s me, Jack.”

The Doctor looked up tentatively and Jack had to suppress a gasp of horror.

He was a mess; clothes tattered and torn, stained with dark red blood, hair even wilder than normal, exposed flesh covered with ugly welts, shaking uncontrollably all over. But the worst sight by far was his eyes. They were haunted and wide with terror; he looked like a frightened animal, cornered, who might bolt at any second.

Jack backed off and sat cross-legged on the loft, shaking his head, “Oh, Doctor. What happened to you?”

The Doctor looked away from him, eyes staring into nothingness, “I happened to me.”

Oh shit, Jack thought. This was even worse than he expected. He did this to himself? What possibly could have happened that made him do something this extreme?

“Come on; let’s get you cleaned up, okay?” Jack said, moving towards the Time Lord even slower than before.

The Doctor said nothing, but this time let Jack get close enough for him to gather the alien into his arms and manoeuvre down the ladder. This would have been a difficult task but the Doctor was so light in his arms that Jack was unsure if he had eaten anything in the last month at least.

He carried the shaking bundle down the corridor of the TARDIS. She had moved various rooms around so that the first one he came to on the left was what looked like a med bay. He entered the room and placed the Doctor gently on the hospital-like bed.

The Doctor’s eyes were dull and unseeing, all the fire and emotion gone leaving them glazed over and lifeless. Jack delicately undid the button of his pinstriped jacket and slid it off his shoulders. He felt slightly uncomfortable about undressing the Time Lord but it was necessary.

He slid the tie over the Doctor’s head and made quick work of the buttons on his torn blue shirt. Slowly, gently, Jack slid the rags off the bony shoulders and regarded the half-naked Time Lord in front of him.

Jack could see every rib sticking out, every limb shaking violently. His skin was riddled with tiny, ugly burns. Jack bit back the comment he was going to make about the state of the Time Lord and went to the cupboards to search for first-aid supplies.

He then returned to the Doctor and began to attend to his most urgent wounds. Jack knew that Time Lords healed faster than normal so he just focused on the more severe injuries; a large cut above his left temple and burn marks all over (acid rain?).

Jack started with the cut on his head and dabbed gently at it with a damp cloth. The Doctor hissed and jumped at the contact. Jack winced, “Sorry Doc, but I gotta get you cleaned up. You look like death warmed over.”

The Doctor whimpered at the returned pressure as Jack cleaned his wound but this time he didn’t flinch away. He looked so pale and small and Jack wondered what could possibly have happened to the Doctor since he last saw him, when they had danced together.

“So… you wanna tell me what happened?” Jack asked quietly, dabbing at the cut.

When the Doctor spoke, he spoke in a broken, haunted voice, “I went too far Jack. And I changed something that never should have changed… and now it’s all wrong because I killed her, it was my fault and I killed her!”

The Doctor began to shake as his body was wracked with sobs. Jack pulled the Doctor to him and held him in his arms, whispering comfort into his ear. He had no idea what he was talking about but he did know that changing something major was bad. Really bad. And the Doctor blamed himself.

When the Doctor’s snuffles had died down slightly, Jack turned around to find some new clothes for the Time Lord. He looked in what seemed to be a linen closet (a strange occurrence in a med bay but hey) and found a soft brown t-shirt and blue trousers.

“Here Doc, get into these clean clothes, alright? I’ll be out in the console room if you need me.”

The Doctor nodded and accepted the clothes but made no move to get into them. Jack sighed and left the man to his own devices, walking to the console room and leaning against the railing.

“What happened to him baby? What’s he done?” he asked the ship desperately. After a second of silence, there was a beeping behind him.

Jack turned and approached the screen on the console, which was flashing at him dully. He flicked a few buttons and watched in dismay as the TARDIS showed him some footage from the first human space station on Mars.

“Oh, Doctor… What did you do?”


End file.
